Emergency safety switches, emergency stops, or E-stops are typically part of a comprehensive safety control system that is utilized to supervise the operation of automated production systems, such as those used, for example, for automated manufacturing. Specifically, the safety control system is in communication with one or more emergency safety switches and with various pieces of automated machinery that is part of the automated production line. In response to the actuation of the emergency safety switch to indicate that an unsafe event has occurred or is about to occur, the safety control system stops or terminates the operation of the automated machinery in order to prevent the occurrence of injury to workers, the machinery, or to the articles being handled by the machinery. Thus, emergency safety switches or E-stops are provided as manually-actuated switches, which are actuated by a worker when he or she identifies or anticipates an unsafe condition and needs to stop the automated movement of the production line machinery.
Current emergency stop switches or E-stop switches are required to be hardwired into the safety circuit wiring of the safety control system, which requires substantial time and effort to carry out. In the case of existing safety control systems that utilize proprietary wiring configurations, it can take an inexperienced technician a significant amount of time and effort to understand the wiring logic of such wiring configurations in order to correctly attach the emergency safety switch or E-stop to the safety system wiring. Such drawbacks may result in the lack of a sufficient number of emergency safety switches or E-stops being installed along the automated production line or, in some cases, the complete lack of the installation of any emergency safety switches altogether.
Therefore, there is a need for an emergency safety switch, or E-stop, that is configured to be easily retrofit or attached to the wiring of an existing safety control system for the machinery of an automated production line or process. In addition, there is a need for an emergency safety switch, or E-stop, that is low cost.